


Freedom hangs like heaven

by elanorelle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-07
Updated: 2011-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-22 08:12:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanorelle/pseuds/elanorelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's the longest road in America, Sam. If that's not part of our cultural heritage then I don't know what is."</p><p>(Originally posted to LJ 11/04/2011.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freedom hangs like heaven

**Author's Note:**

> For silverbullets, and the prompt: _the road goes ever, ever on_. Title from Iron  & Wine.

"I still don't get why this was on the list," Sam says, for _god_ , like the third fucking time since Newport.

"Because it's awesome," Dean points out, also for the third time. For someone with as big a brain as Sam, he has an awfully hard time grasping the freaking obvious.

"It's a road, Dean," Sam says. "A road."

"It's the _longest_ road in America, Sam. If that's not part of our cultural heritage or whatever that lameass phrase you used was, then I don't know what is."

Sam sighs. "We've done Route 66 before," he says. "That's way more culturally significant. And shorter."

"Yeah, but, everyone does Route 66," Dean says. "How many people can say they've driven the whole length of the longest road in America, huh?"

Sam shifts in his seat and doesn't respond to Dean's query, but instead groans: "God, my legs are cramping up already."

Dean grips the steering wheel a little tighter and says: "Would you just stop whining and do your job?"

Sam's eyebrows shoot up towards his hairline. Or rather, Dean assumes they do – eyes on the road and all that – because that's what usually happens right before Sam asks a stupid question like: "I have a job?"

"Yeah," Dean says, "You're the navigator, remember? Come on, we talked about this."

"Yeah, we did," Sam says, "And I thought we concluded that since the route basically consists of getting on the road in Oregon and staying on it until Boston, my skills as a map-reader weren't exactly required."

Dean frowns. The conversation had kind of ended that way, it's true, but still, would it really hurt for Sam to give the map a cursory glance and quit complaining for just a short stretch of road? This was starting to feel a lot like the roadtrip they'd taken when Dean was eighteen and Sam had sulked most of the time about the fact Dean wouldn't let them just spend the whole week in D.C., where Sam had a list of about fifty boring museums he wanted to visit. They'd already seen the White House, and the Capitol, and at least three national monuments, and that was quite enough for Dean, so he dragged Sam out of the city and put up with his sullen silence for three hundred miles before Sam deigned to speak to him again.

"Okay, fine," Dean says, "whatever, but you're still riding shotgun, and house rules still apply here, so. Shut up."

And with that, Dean turns on the radio and leaves Sam sulking to himself in the passenger seat.

After another fifty miles or so, Dean switches off Metallica and turns to ask Sam whether he wants to drive for a while, as a peace offering. He gets as far as opening his mouth and then snaps it shut again when he sees Sam with his head lolling against the back of the seat, mouth slack with sleep.

Dean clamps down on his knee-jerk reaction as older brother to give Sam some kind of rude awakening, and turns his attention back to the road. He leaves the music off, listening instead to the hum of the engine and imagining he can hear the slow, steady cadence of Sam's breathing underneath.

He gives Sam another seventy miles of peace, then comes to the conclusion that they need gas—and Dean needs coffee—more than needs (or wants) to let his brother sleep.

Sam blinks awake as soon as Dean pulls up to the gas station and turns off the ignition, the way Dean knew he would.

"We there yet?" he asks, muzzily, scrunching his face up and stretching his long arms out as best he can in the cramped space available.

Dean just stares at him. "Yes, Sam, we're there," he says with as much sarcasm as he can muster. "I drove three thousand miles while you were asleep."

"I kind of wouldn't be surprised," Sam chuckles. "Remember that time I went to sleep in Oklahoma and you woke me up in Michigan?"

"Yeah, well," Dean says. "You were whacked out on demerol that time, dude, you would have slept all the way to freaking Canada if I'd let you."

Sam tilts his head and doesn't say anything, which Dean takes as his cue to get out of the car and start filling her up. Sam, for his part, goes in search of coffee and snacks, and comes back with enough of both to set them up for another thousand miles, at least. Well, maybe five hundred, if Sam's gonna drive next, meaning that Dean's the one riding shotgun with nothing better to do than eat half a dozen Krispy Kremes all by himself.

That actually sounds like a really great idea, right now, and so when Dean's finished at the pump and Sam looks like he's about to get back in the passenger side, Dean says, "Hey," and tosses Sam the car keys, which Sam utterly fails to catch. He blinks a couple of times in a way that Dean does not, and never will, consider endearing and reaches down to pick the keys up from where they've landed on the forecourt.

"You want me to drive?" he asks, once again demonstrating his amazing ability to state the obvious. Sometimes Dean wonders how, exactly, Sam has ever kept himself alive when Dean wasn't around to do it for him.

"If you want to," Dean shrugs. "Unless you think you need some more beauty sleep, princess."

Sam purses up his lips in irritation and says: "No, thanks, I'm fine."

"Well, good," Dean says, "three thousand miles to go, Sammy, it ain't gonna drive itself."

When they're back in the car, positions reversed, Sam just sits with the key in the ignition, not turning it, just staring out the window and frowning slightly, the way he has been ever since they got on the road in Oregon and Dean had announced they were driving Route 20 all the way to Boston.

"Sam," Dean says, trying not to sound too impatient but finding it hard. "Come on, spit it out already, before I make you walk the rest of the way."

"I don't get why we're doing this," Sam suddenly says.

"Doing what?" Dean says. "Stopping for gas? Sharing time behind the wheel? Because I know I'm good, Sam, but even I can't drive across an entire country without a break."

Sam's quiet for a few seconds, considering, and then he says: "I know we made a list. And I know we said we'd do everything on it, no matter how weird it seemed, but. It's just, we said we were gonna do all this stuff we haven't done before, right? All the things we never did when we were kids and we haven't had time to do since, all of that."

"Yeah," Dean says. "And, so?"

Sam frowns, waving his hands expansively in a gesture of confusion. "This is— We're just— _driving_ , Dean, we're doing what we always do. What we've always done, and I don't—" his shoulders slump down in such a droopy, defeated way it would almost be comical, if it weren't so pathetic. "I don't get why we're still doing it."

Dean pauses, unsure of exactly what he wants to say, and how to say it. "You don't want to, anymore?" he eventually asks, for want of anything better.

"Not all the time," Sam says. "I thought— thought maybe we'd _stop_ for a while, now, you know?"

"Stop where?" Dean asks, genuinely curious. Sam's never mentioned anywhere he'd rather be, though Dean has a fleeting thought of Palo Alto that still, after all these years, makes his heart clench uncomfortably.

But Sam just shrugs and says: "Anywhere, man, I don't care. It's not like I have a plan or anything, just. We don't have to do _this_ anymore, not if we don't want to."

Dean looks out at the sun sitting low on the horizon, at the trees glowing yellow in the fading light and the bright glare bouncing off the grimy windows of the gas station. He figures he must have seen this same sight in forty-eight states by now, but somehow on this occasion, it looks entirely new.

"This is different," he says, and when Sam goes to interrupt him, he presses on: "No, Sammy, it is. It's not— not the same as before, because you're right, we don't have to carry on if we don't want to. There's no hunt we're trying to get to, no evil we're trying to fight. There's nothing coming up behind us, nothing out in front of us we're trying to reach, or stop, or avoid altogether. There's just ... there's just the road. And I know you're tired of it, and if you wanna stop somewhere then we can, but ..." Dean breathes out a heavy sigh, painfully aware of how much this conversation means, and how little he wants to be having it. "I just thought we could see what it was like to be ... you know. Free."

Sam blinks, again, though this time Dean can see that it's to blink away tears, and the very last thing Dean wants on his hard-earned roadtrip (that isn't, he hopes, going to end at a haunting or an apocalypse or another dirtbag motel) is his little brother blubbing all over the place, so he does the sensible thing and adds: "Of course, it doesn't seem like I'm ever going to get rid of your sorry ass, so it's not like I can be _totally_ free, but."

That has the desired effect: Sam frowns again and glares at Dean for a second or two, but then his expression softens and he smiles at Dean, just a little.

"Okay," Sam says, and he sounds, at last, content. "So, we drive."

Dean nods, smiling back at Sam as he finally turns the key in the ignition and starts to manoeuvre the car off the forecourt.

"Yeah," Dean says. "We drive. For a while, at least."

"And then—" Sam says, hesitant but hopeful. "Then we can stop?"

Dean settles back in the passenger seat and looks out on the three thousand miles still left ahead of them.

"Then we can stop," he says, as Sam pulls out onto the road again.


End file.
